Your 8-year-old daughter takes a walk on Thanksgiving and never comes home. The police pick up a likely suspect -- and then let him go, for lack of evidence. What do you do?

That is the start of "Prisoners," a film that starts out like any number of recent Liam Neeson pictures. Hugh Jackman is the star here, and we know the drill -- vigilantism, brutalism, revenge. And, from the audience, approving cheers.

But "Prisoners" is smarter and trickier than that, as it begins to develop a serial-killer mystery that has elements of "Zodiac" and "Silence of the Lambs" -- and a moral complexity that few movies like this even bother to consider.

As Jackman pursues his quarry -- and his methods grow more and more violent -- the certainty that this is even the right man begins to blur, and the scope of the crime begins to deepen.

Directed by Canada's Denis Villeneuve -- who made the similarly complex "Incendies," about Mideast terrorism -- it's a story set in rural Pennsylvania, in a community where crucifixes are as common as gun racks.

In fact, the question of faith runs throughout the film, as one traumatized family tries to cling to hope, and other, even more damaged, people fall into soul-deadening despair.

Jackman is terrific as Keller, a deeply traditional, working-class man who sees himself as his family's staunch, unshakable protector. When, in his eyes, he fails at that job, he starts to lose his grip.

Jake Gyllenhaal is fine, too, as the detective on the case. Terrence Howard as another worried father, Maria Bello as Jackman's wife, and Melissa Leo as the suspect's fiercely protective mother round out, and enrich, the cast.

Villeneuve gets his shocks from unexpected places, too. Like a dusty cellar, filled with the cast-off statues of saints. Or a room full of padlocked storage boxes, the lids punched full of air holes. Or the sound of a circular saw, suddenly roaring to life.

True, sometimes the movie is a little too cute for its own good, unfairly full of flagrant red herrings (Why, for example, is Gyllenhaal's detective named Loki? Um, no reason, really.) At other times, it pushes the laws of probability a bit too far, or leaves a detail unexplained.

But this is a coldly gruesome, tensely thrilling drama that both dares to take its time (it clocks in at almost 2 1/2 hours), and refuses to let anyone off the hook -- right up until its chilling, just-ambiguous-enough ending.

Is it the best Hollywood mystery we've seen in a while? Oh yes. Is it one any parent would want to see? Only if they don't mind nightmares.

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PRISONERS4 stars, out of 5

Snapshot: A revenge-themed
thriller about a man who, in searching for his kidnapped daughter,
decides to take matters into his own hands.

What works: It rises
above genre conventions with an interesting story, some genuinely
provocative themes and emotional complexity.

What doesn't: With
its flagrant red herrings and its testing of plausibility, it sometimes
is a little too cute for its own good.